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EUROPEAN ARCHIVES

By GEORGE LINCOLN BURR

REPRINTED FROM THE

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VOL. VII NO. 4 JULY 1002

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[Reprinted from The American Historical Review, Vol. VII., No. 4, July, 1902.]

EUROPEAN ARCHIVES1

I am asked to tell you something about European archives — a
vast subject for a twenty-minute talk. What I know about Euro-
pean archives is a much smaller theme ; yet even that will bear
cutting. Precluded from the outset is the method of that masterly
study in which a half dozen years ago an American scholar gave
to the world its best account of the archives of the Vatican.2 May
we have more such papers. But such must deal with European
archives singly. Be it mine in homelier fashion to acquaint you
with them all. So broad a treatment must begin with the rudi-
ments. Will you pardon me, then, if, forgetting the riper scholars
before me, I address myself for a little to those who know of the
archives of Europe no more than did I not so very long ago ?

First of all : Archives are not to manuscripts — as I, at least,
once supposed — what libraries are to printed books. Book manu-
scripts— chronicles, journals, all that has literary form or substance
— belong, like printed books, to libraries. In archives seek only
documents, i. e., official and legal papers : edicts, treaties, charters,
writs, wills, deeds, minutes, registers, yes and official correspond-
ence. But not all documents. Look not there for those of current
history. Such cannot yet leave the keeping of their authors or
owners. Only when the transactions they record are closed, and
the secrets they contain can safely be shared, will they be merged
in the archives. The depositories in which they meanwhile rest —
if they belong to the bureaus of a government — are technically
known as registratures, and are not open to the public. Thus, in
England, diplomatic correspondence prior to 1850 may be sought
in the national archives — the Public Record Office ; but only that
previous to 1760 may be seen without special permission from His
Majesty's Secretary of State, while all that of later date than 1850
remains still in the jealous custody of the Foreign Office. So, in
France, the hesitant ministry of Foreign Affairs at last lays freely
before the public (though in its own archives) all antedating

'A paper read at the meeting of the American Historical Association (December,
1901). Despite its somewhat colloquial form, I have preferred to print it (save for one
or two minute corrections) precisely as delivered, adding only a few foot-notes to indi-
cate its printed sources or to suggest where further information may be found.

2 The allusion is, of course, to Professor Haskins, whose study on The Vatican
Archives was printed in the American Historical Review for October, 1896.

(653)

654 G. L. Burr

September 14, 1791, and with restrictions all to May 30, 18 14; but
nothing later. In Italy they will show you documents to 181 5 ;
in Holland to 1813 ; in Denmark only to 1750.1

Not the newest documents, then, are in the archives. But not
the oldest either. Archives there have been, indeed, almost from
the dawn of history. Egyptians, Assyrians, Medes, Hebrews,
Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, all, as we know, had their documents
and their depositories for them — temple or palace or archive build-
ing ; but all these archives were long ago ruined or scattered.
Such remnants as are ours must be sought in libraries or in
museums. To modern archives they have left nothing but their
name and the fruitful tradition of their methods. The new Ger-
manic kingdoms of the west, Goth and Lombard and Frank,
Meroving and Karling, had too their archives, aping in such crude
fashion as they could their Roman models ; but these are likewise
gone without a trace, a prey to inroad and to feudal chaos. If
to-day in the museum-room of the French national archives there
are displayed with pride the papyrus charters of Merovingian kings,
it is not that there they were preserved. They owe their safety to
quite another asylum.2

For, happily, one place of refuge baffled even the fury and the
neglect of the Dark Ages. It was to church and to abbey that
even secular princes turned for the shelter of their records ; and all
that is left us of the documents of the earlier medieval centuries we
owe to them. The oldest archives of Europe are those of the
Church, and the oldest of all those of the bishops of Rome. From
the fourth century, at least, their existence is certain. Yet even
here, as Professor Haskins has told us, what is left from the early
Middle Ages is only a gleaning. The extant continuous records
begin only with Pope Innocent III., at the end of the twelfth cen-
tury. If this be true of Rome, how much more of the lesser cen-
ters of ecclesiastical life. For centuries almost nothing is left us
save title-deeds to property — the record of pious donations and of
the prayers which were their meed — with here and there perhaps a
scrap of ecclesiastical legislation.

1 Yet it is rash to name these limits positively. With the bettering of good faith in
international intercourse and with the growing conviction that the truth is less damaging
than the suspicions bred by concealment, these restrictions are constantly being
cut down. The statement as to England, corrected from my address as delivered, I have
from the Record Office itself, under date of April 28, 1902. For the permission of the
Secretary of State any other than British subjects must apply through their diplomatic
representative.

2 For the following sketch of the rise of European archives I am especially indebted
to Franz von Loher's Archivleffe (Paderborn, 1890), to H. Bresslau's Handbuch der
Urkundenlehre fur Deutschland und Italien, I (Leipzig, 1889), and to the excellent
article on " Archives" by Arthur Giry in the Grande Encyclopedic.

European Archives 655

Civil archives passed out of thought. The Holy Roman Em-
pire itself, in spite of imperial traditions and of the pattern of her papal
rival, was for centuries content with such store of public records as
her migrant emperors and their clerkly chancellors could drag with
them from place to place. Of " archives of the Empire," there be-
gins to be mention just at the middle of the twelfth century,1 but
the phrase is puzzling, and, according to our best authority on im-
perial diplomatics, it was not till when, a half century later, the
Hohenstaufen princes learned in their new Sicilian realm that busi-
ness-like administration which Norman had there been taught by
Saracen, that they first brought system into the custody of the im-
perial documents.2 Yet rude enough it must still have been, for
when, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, the Emperor
Henry VII. made his fatal coronation-journey into Italy, the
archives not only journeyed with him, but, left stranded there by
his death, may still be found, in great part, at Pisa and Turin.3 Nor
is there reason, from what is left, to suppose that they contained
aught older than the just preceding days of Rudolf of Habsburg.
It was a century later when, under Kaiser Sigismund, it was at last
established that an Emperor's archives pass to his successor in
office, even when not his heir by blood ; and only from the year
1422 can one speak of the archives of the Empire as a stable insti-
tution. As a group of institutions let me rather say ; for, though the
Imperial Court- Archives {Reichshofarchiv) came to rest with the
Habsburgs at Vienna, one must almost to our day seek those of
the Archchancery {Reichskanzlei), at Mainz, those of the Supreme
Court of Justice (Rcichskammergerichf), at Wetzlar, those of the
Diets at Ratisbon ; and the two last-named collections are still
at large.4

Ambulant, too, till late in the twelfth century were whatever of
archives belonged to the kings of France. It was only when, in
1 194, at Freteval, Philip Augustus had the chagrin to leave his
archives, with the rest of his baggage, in the victorious hands of
Richard of England, that he had the good sense to quit the itinerant
system and to establish at Paris that Tresor des Chartes, out of which

l"In archivis imperii,'''' 1146. See Bresslau, I. pp. 134-137. Cf. also F. v.
Loher, Archivlehre, pp. 58-61.

2 Bresslau, I. p. 135.

3 Loher, p. 94; Bresslau, pp. 140-142.

* Those of the Reichskanzlei are now for the most part at Vienna. Of those of the
Reichskammergericht only so much as relates to the old Empire in general, to the lands
now Prussian, and to the lost outlying provinces (like Switzerland and the Low Countries)
still remains at Wetzlar ; what concerned the other German states or their citizens has
since 1845 been distributed to their local archives. See Loher, pp. 187, 196.

656 G. L. Burr

\
have grown in our day the French national archives. True, for two

or three centuries prior to the Revolution it received almost no acces-
sions, the ministers of the state seeming to count the official papers
of their bureaus as private property, to be dispersed or appropriated
at their pleasure ; but when, with the Revolution, there fell both the
Old Regime and the Church, there could be drawn together at
Paris from all France, not only such administrative and judicial
papers as had survived, but almost all the ecclesiastical and baronial
archives of the realm. It is this mass, or rather so much of it as
was spared by the Revolutionary vandalism and by the sifting pre-
scribed by the Convention, which, now merged with the ancient
archives of the crown, forms the wealth of the Archives Nationales.1

And even the public records of England, which in age as in full-
ness surpass all others in Europe, begin but a little earlier. They
too date, in orderly sequence, only from the early twelfth century.2

But the example thus set by the greatest secular authorities was
eagerly followed by the lesserA The Bavarian archives, to-day the
oldest and richest in Germany, were in order before "the Empire's.3
In the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries not only all
leading governments and princely houses, but even the pettier feudal
lords and the rising towns as well, had begun to hoard their records ;
and by the fourteenth even the burgher families and the notaries
had caught the infection. From this time forth, archives multiplied
apace, and slowly took on system and thoroughness. The scrib-
bling sixteenth century brought them to their full activity, which
not even the turmoil and ravage of the seventeenth could seriously
interrupt. In 1770 there are known to have been, in Paris alone,
no less than 405 treasuries of archives ; and the number in all
France at the end of the ancient regime is reckoned by Arthur Giry
at more than io,ooo.4 Nor is there reason to suppose that the rest
of Europe fell behind.

It was the task of the nineteenth century, with its absorption of
small states, its secularization of convents, its apotheosis of nation-
ality, its scientific spirit, to gather into great central archives this
wealth of documents and to make it accessible to historians. Yet

1 For all this see H. Bordier, Les Archives de la France (Paris, 1855), an(l f°r an
admirable briefer sketch, brought down to the present, Giry's article " Archives" in the
Grande Encyclopedic.

2S. R. Scargill-Bird, Guide to the Documents in the Public Record Office (London,
1891), p. Hi.

3 Their beginnings, or at least the beginnings of their consecutive contents, belong to
the early thirteenth century (Bresslau, p. 149). January 1204 is the date of the first docu-
ment of the Monumenta Wittelsbacensia.

* Grande Encyclopedic, article " Archives."

European Archives 657

neither the one nor the other has been accomplished to such an
extent as is often supposed. The great attempt of Napoleon, in
1 8 10, to centralize at Paris all the archives of Europe was brought
to naught, in 18 14, by that dreamer's fall; and the thousands of
wagon-loads which had come trundling over Pyrenees and Alps
and Rhine, from Simancas, from Turin, from Rome, from Vienna,
from Holland, went trundling back again, not without some drop-
ping of their treasures in the mud.1 In most European lands not
even the archives of the state, though now for the most part under
a single control, are gathered into a single repository. Even in
England it is only within the last half century that the public
records as a whole have been put in the care of the national archiv-
ist— quaintly called the Master of the Rolls — and their more im-
portant deposits drawn together within the spacious halls of the
new Record Office. Of the almost countless lesser collections
there is not yet even an inventory, save as one can glean it from the
reports of the Historical Manuscripts Commission.

In Prussia, and yet more in Austro-Hungary, the several pro-
vincial archives maintain their integrity against those of the dynastic
capital. * Even in Bavaria, it is only the documents of earlier
date than the fifteenth century that are centralized at Munich ;
though the admirable system by which papers may be transferred
at wish between the provincial archives and the capital makes this
scarcely a hindrance to research. And if, in the Netherlands, the
Rijksarchief at the Hague has, to the great convenience of Ameri-
can scholars, succeeded in adding to its other wealth the vast com-
mercial records of the two great trading corporations — the Dutch
East India Company and the Dutch West India Company — which
so long shaped or shared the fortunes of Orient and Occident (nay,
has now at last drawn into the same complex of buildings the rich
private archives of the House of Orange), in Spain, not less impor-
tant to the transatlantic student, not only do the archives of Aragon
and of Navarre remain at Barcelona or at Pampeluna, but those of

1 A classed table of these foreign archives gathered at Paris by Napoleon is printed
at the end of H. Bordier's Les Archives de la France (Paris, 1855). Interesting details
both as to the seizure and as to the return of the German archives may be found in an
article by H. Schlitter on "Die Zuruckstellung der von den Franzosen im Jahre 1809
aus Wien entfiihrten Archive, Bibliotheken und Kunstsammlungen," in the Mittheilungen
des Instituts fur cesterreichische Geschichtsforschung for 1901 (Bd. XXII., pp. 108-122).
I have in my keeping, at Cornell University, a manuscript which is known to have be-
longed to the library of a famous German city at the end of the eighteenth century, and
which- probably, carried off by the French, fell into the mud from their overloaded
wagons, as others are known to have done. Such, at least, is the conjecture of the pres-
ent librarian-archivist of the town ; and it squares well with the appearance of the manu-
script and with all I know of its history.

658 G. L. Burr

Castile (whose alone was the monopoly of the Indies) are divided be-
tween Simancas and Alcala, while at Seville, so long the one port of
entry for the Indian trade, are still the archives of the Indies, and at
Madrid the deposits of more modern bureaus, such as the (to us)
important Hydrographic Depository. As for the lesser archives
throughout Europe — archives of towns, families, corporations,
churches, orders, individuals — they are, of course, still legion.1

It had been my thought to tell you something in detail of the
contents and organization of at least two or three of the great
national archives. But my time is already waning r^and, without so
much as a glance at the literature of the subject,^et me rather offer
you a few suggestions as to how European archives may be used.3
There are at least four ways : 1. One may go to the archives in
person. To the student of leisure and training this is doubtless the
most tempting course : but it has its own difficulties and drawbacks.
One needs, in the first place, or may need, an introduction. Let

1 The best idea of their multiplicity and variety may perhaps be gained from the
book of Langlois and Stein, Les Archives de /' ' Histoire de France (Paris, 1891). This
work, though it seeks only to point out in what collections, in France or abroad, material
may be found for the study of the history of France, is at present the best guide to the
archives of Europe as a whole. It even has something to tell of those of Africa, Asia,
America, and the Indies. V To the archives of German lands (not only the German
Empire, but Austria- Hungary, Switzerland, Luxemburg, and the Baltic Provinces as
well) C. A. H. Burkhardt's Hand- und Adressbuch der deutschen Archive. (2d ed.,
Leipzig, 1887), though its descriptive notes are of the briefest, is a useful directory.
Excellent brief surveys of the archives of Spain, of Holland, of Sweden, of Roumania,
are to be found in the too short-lived Revue Internationale des Archives (Paris, 1895-
1 896 ) . Suggestion of further literature may be sought in Giry' s Manuel de Diplomatique
(Paris, 1894), pp. 37-40, and at the end of his article in the Grande Encyclopedie ; and
especially in the article on " La Science des Archives," prefaced by Langlois to the
Revue Internationale des Archives, just mentioned. For Great Britain, for Russia, for
Italy, for Spain, for Belgium, there is nowhere accessible so much as a complete list of
the archives. Of high value, however, for British archives are of course the reports of
the Historical Manuscripts Commissions.

2 1 may be allowed to mention in a foot-note that of the contents of the Archives
Nationales of France there is a good single-volume printed inventory, the Etat
Sommaire par Series des Documents Conserves aux Archives Nationales (Paris, 1891).
To these, too, the book of Bordier is mainly devoted, and there is an excellent brief
analysis in Giry' s article in the Grande Encyclopidie. To the wealth of the English
Public Record Office the best key is now the Guide of Scargill-Bird (London, 1891).
Here is hardly the place to mention the great series of Calendars of State Papers,
through which such vast bodies of documents in English archives and of documents in
foreign archives bearing on English history are becoming accessible to scholars. On the
archives of Venice, so important for all Europe during the earlier modern centuries, we
have the entertaining volume of A. Baschet, Les Archives de Venise (Paris, 1870).
For the Vatican archives let me again point out the worth of Professor Haskins's study.

3 For help in their use there are many handbooks, such as, for England, R. Sims's
Manual for the Genealogist, Topographer, Antiquary, and Legal Professor (new ed.,
London, 1888), and W. Rye's Records and Record Searching (2d ed., London, 1897).
I have found especially suggestive the little Leitfaden fiir Archivbenutzer of Dr. Max
Bar (Leipzig, 1896).

European Archives 659

not the sensitive vanity of the scholar rebel at this. Archives are
not libraries. Their volumes have no duplicates, and, once lost,
are gone forever. Nowhere is a marauder's task so easy as among
their loose papers, and nowhere are his temptations so great — a for-
tune, a reputation, a policy, may hang on the fate of a single paper.
To-day all the public archives of Europe, Constantinople's alone
excepted, lie open to the accredited scholar ; but very few, like the
English Record Office and the French Archives Nationales, admit
all comers. One may, of course, introduce oneself, especially if
one hold any academic or official station, by writing to the archives
beforehand of one's visit ; and usually, I think, such a letter will in
any case be adequate introduction. \ Even in the case of open
archives, such an advance application is desirable ; and by many,
as those of Germany, it is strictly required.1 The materials one
wishes to use may be for the moment out of reach or may need
hunting up. The archivist or sub-archivist in charge of them may
be out of town. The public research-room in most archives is but
small, and unannounced guests may embarrass. Write beforehand.
I speak with emphasis, for I have myself been a sinner, and have
paid the penalty of delay. And in your application state with all
the definiteness possible what you wish to investigate, taking care
(especially for the German archives) not to make your subject too
broad.2 Have a care, too, in choosing the time for your visit.

1 See, for the requirements usual in German archives, Bar, Leitfaden, pp. 15-19;
Holtzinger, Katech ism us der Registrator- und Archivkunde (Leipzig, 1883), pp. 130-
134. " Archive sind noch immer keine Bibliothek," writes even the helpful Franz von
Loher, so long the head of the Bavarian archives ; " nicht jedermann erhalt Zutritt, son-
dern nur, wer Vertrauen verdient, und den Arbeiten der Archivbeamten nicht hinderlich
fallt. Der echt wissenschaftliche Forscher wird anders bedient, als ein ewig fordernder
und fragender Dilettant, und es giebt ein anerkannt ehrenwerter Charakter festere Gewahr
gegen Missbrauch, als dererste beste Unbekannte." {ArchivleAre, p. 260.)

2 No matter how well introduced or how specific in one's appeal, one must not be too
sure of seeing the documents he seeks. A decade or two ago, while engaged in research
in western Germany, I found myself in a Rhenish city, one of the homes of the Prussian
archives. It had been suggested to me by the archivist of a neighboring city that I might
find here certain papers of value to my quest. I made bold to call upon the archivist,
who, receiving me most kindly, told me of documents which might prove of use ; but he
added that he could lay them before me only when I had gained permission from the
Director-General of the Archives, in Berlin — the great historian, Heinrich von Sybel.
Happily I was equipped with a personal letter to Dr. von Sybel from his friend and my
own, a scholar who had shortly before been our minister at Berlin and who is now again
our ambassador at the German court. I enclosed it to him, with my plea, asking to
examine any documents which might be found in these provincial archives touching a
specified subject. In due time his answer came : a curt half-page informing me that no
document on this subject existed in the Prussian archives. Perhaps the great historian
felt only contempt for a student still interested in the history of the witch-persecution ;
perhaps he lacked faith in the seriousness of an American scholar. I think it more likely
that I had come up against that principle of German archive-administration which forbids

660 G. L. Burr

Many archives, especially the smaller ones and those of the Church,
have long and frequent holidays. Thus, at the Vatican, what with
Christmas, Carnival, Easter, and the long summer vacation, in ad-
dition to the single feast-days, the working days (as Professor Has-
kins has told us) are less than half those of the year. ./Remember,
too, that the archive working day is short — sometimes only three
or four hours. This is the more serious because the use of the
archives is not always cost-free.

Only of late years and in the great public archives has it become
wholly free ; and there are still archives of state, like those of
Bavaria and Mecklenburg, where, while no charge is made for
research in the interest of science, a fee must be paid for private
investigations, like those of the genealogist or the lawyer. Even
where no fee is paid, one must not forget that archives are as yet
seldom endowed for the public ; that the scholar is a guest, entitled
only to courtesy ; and that for service rendered he owes both grati-
tude and wherever possible a more substantial recognition. y^Tt
behooves one, then, to make the most of his archive-time ; and all
possible should be done beforehand to orient oneself as to one's
field of research and as to the resources of the archives. And
when at last one is seated at the archive-table, documents before
him, his trouble may be but begun. They must be read, analyzed,
interpreted. Even the European scripts of our own time are not
to be scanned with ease by one who has but read in print the tongues
in which they are written ; and with every century backward the
puzzle grows.1 True, at one's elbow, in all the greater archives,
are trained archivists ready to help with every doubtful reading,
obscure allusion, ambiguous date.;/ but they cannot undertake to

to the public all documents touching the good fame of living persons or of their families.
Even in Italy, the papers of criminal trials may not be seen till seventy years are gone.
Be the explanation what it may, I had opportunity a few months later to learn a differing
attitude. Being in Paris, I presented myself at the National Archives, and, with no
credential but my visiting card, asked for documents upon the same subject. I was shown
into a study room, and they were brought me at once. If the other course was hesitant,
surely this was rash. This difference in administrative temper was well pointed out a
quarter century ago by the German historian Baumgarten (" Archive und Bibliotheken in
Frankreich und Deutschland," in the Preussische Jahrbucher for 1875), taking his text
from the reply of the great Belgian archirist-in-chief, Gachard, to his question by what
steps he could gain access to certain documents in the archives at Brussels: "Tout cela,
Monsieur, sera mis a votre disposition sans que vous ayez'a faire aucune demarche ni
aucune demande : nos Archives sont ouvertes a tout le monde, mais plus particulierement
aux hommes distingues qui veulent venir les consul ter dans l'interet de travaux histori-
ques." Yet it is precisely the German archives which go furthest in the lending of docu-
ments and in their transfer from place to place for the use of scholars.

1 1 have seen an American family on its travels present itself at the Dutch archives
in search of records of which its members could read neither handwriting nor language.

European Archives 66 1

teach the elements of palaeography and diplomatics. With such
aids now available in English as Thompson's Handbook l and
Trice Martin's Record Interpreter? no enterprising student need long
fear ancient script ; and, if he have but French enough for Giry's
manual,3 he may soon grapple with charters and chronology.
But he must not waste good archive -time in the study. Nor does
he need to do so, for

2. One may use the archives by deputy. Of course, the deputy,
too, needs accrediting ; and, if he prove untrained, he must not hope
for the patient help shown to one on his own errand. Why not
send one who is trained? I Haunting all great archives are experts
who live by such research.4 Where possible, it is best to let the
archivists themselves choose for you. You are in less danger of
being victimized by a trickster or an incapable, or of hitting on one
who is persona non grata among the documents. Best of all is it,
in general, if you can win for your task an archivist himself in his
off hours. \/

3. One can use the archives by means of transcripts. Nearly
all great archives furnish such on request or are ready to name com-
petent transcribers. One need not tremble for the expense, for in
the greater archives it is usually fixed by law and named in their
published and posted rules ; and it is often astonishingly moderate.
Certified transcripts, i. e., those whose accuracy is guaranteed by the
seal of the archives and the certificate of the archivist, cost much
more ; but, save for use as legal evidence in courts of law, they
are hardly to be wished. Of course, if one is to order transcripts,
one must know precisely what one wants. One may get clues from
the earlier scholars who have investigated one's theme. General
works, like Oesterley's Wegzveiser* and the Archives de V Histoire
de France of Langlois and Stein, will be of great help within their
own fields. Above all, the analyses and inventories of the archives
themselves must be ransacked, so far as they can be found in

^Handbook of Greek and Latin Palceography (London and New York, 1893), by
Edward Maunde Thompson.

2 The Record Interpreter (London, 1892), by Charles Trice Martin.

3 Alanuel de Diplomatique ( Paris, 1 894 ) .

4 Walter Rye, in his Records and Record Searching (p. 124), names a dozen such
at London. At the Hague I found thus constantly busied for English scholars that
admirable worker Mr. W. G. Van Oyen. Though now himself an archivist, he has not
been too busy to be of much aid to me, and he may be able to attend to the errands of
others.

5 Wegweiser durch die Literalur der Urkundensammhingen (Berlin, 1885-1886),
2 vols. An index by places to all the European documents printed or mentioned by his-
torians. Invaluable, despite very grave incompleteness.

662 G. L. Burr

print.1 And, at the best, one can hardly hope thus to find matter not
already familiar to the historians. Yet the greatest of American
medievalists, perhaps the most fruitful of living American his-
torians, Mr. Lea, has never worked a day in European archives : all
his materials have been transcribed for him.

4. Last and as yet least of all, one may use the archives by loan.
Save in Germany, where scholars are sometimes allowed great privi-
leges of this sort, one must be a great personage indeed to have
archive-documents intrusted to one's own custody ; and, remember-
ing such mishaps as the burning of Mommsen's library, we may all
well hope that the exceptions may be few. But the lending from
archives to archives for the more convenient use of scholars, even
as now in America we lend from library to library, is more common.
I have spoken of this use among the Bavarian archives ; and the
Prussian are yet more generous, not restricting this courtesy to those
of Prussia. In France the plan has at least been suggested.2 Of
its use in other lands I know little. However it grow, such treas-
ures are hardly likely to cross the Atlantic.

In conclusion I have only to add that even from that period,
from the twelfth century to the eighteenth, where European archives
are of most value to historians, great bodies of documents may also
be found in the libraries.

George Lincoln Burr.

1 In the German archives one may not hope to see a catalogue, not even a manu-
script one. " Die Vorlegung der Repertorien des Archivs," runs the Prussian statute,
" findet ausseramtlich niemals und an niemand statt." " The reason for this," explains
Franz von Loher (p. 275), " is that the catalogues are the keys to the archives, and as
long as archive-secrecy exists, so long must it especially include the catalogues." So
much the more must the searcher know beforehand what to seek.

2 By Langlois, in the Archives de V Histoire de France (p. xvi, note), and in the
Revue Internationale des Archives (p. 16).

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uxt&tfK

REC'P LP

APR 30 1959

RECP LP

19M0V'6SBQ

JAN 4'fi5 -2 PM

MAR 1 1 1981

REC'D LP

NOV 5'63-lOpM

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-$w

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*W2iB3-4|j5

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General Lit